”Sanctuary should scale with haste like Efflorescence. It just adds more ticks.” 

Well, I must say I was pretty darn excited! It didn’t make sense that it didn’t scale from haste previously.  I quickly logged into the beta to test out the breakpoints I had previously calculated and to see these additional ticks at work…

But wait… they added Haste scaling, but took away mastery’s scaling from HW: Sanctuary. Noooooo!  I then broke out our handy-dandy spreadsheet and started to crunch the numbers trying to answer the questiosn: What does this change mean? Is it a net buff or a net nerf? How does this impact our gearing choices? 

First I looked at 3 breakpoints assuming NO raid haste buff:  and that worked out to a net healing loss of ~25.58% at the first gained tick. It wasn’t until the second additional tick of Sanctuary where having Haste Only scaling work out about neutral to Mastery Only scaling, and it wasn’t until the third tick where haste started to creep ahead. (note: Haste breakpoints are available under Resources Menu: here)

Now, since most of us here are raiders, we can probably assume we’ll be running with a raidwide Haste Buff (provided by Shadow Priests, Moonkin,  and Elemental Shaman), which tilts the numbers slightly making haste better than mastery, but only specifically at certain breakpoints, before or after a break you fall behind what we .

Below is a chart illustrating the scaling of Haste Only and Mastery Only for HW: Sanctuary. I used a 2,000/tick healing point, but because these numbers scale linearly, the scaling is the same regardless if you used 1,000/tick or 50,000/tick. Each tick is capable of critically healing, but for purposes of analysis, and the fact that Holy will not be stacking crit analyzing crit’s RNG impact will not be done.

Now, of course if we look at JUST HW: Sanctuary, Haste seems devalued between breakpoints. The argument is moot, however, since Haste (and crit)  is  the combat stat that scales HW: Sanctuary. The biggest thing to look at is the trend line in these charts. It scales pretty similarly, and works out about the same…  So overall its a nerf at the interim points. However, interim haste ratings, will increase the HPS of Sanctuary by increasing the speed in which it ticks, but not adding additional ticks and thusly not affecting HPM.

At the end of the day, the change really won’t be a huge change to the HPM of the spell, and works out pretty close to nuetral. (ie. At the 4,717 haste breakpoint, the difference is under 2%) It does mean we will be looking at Haste a bit differently since we’ve now “lost” a spell that is affected by Mastery and gained one now affected by Haste….  Breakpoints are important to know, particularly if it means that a simple gem swap or reforging into haste to hit that breakpoint. (Of course, providing you are using the spell that is reaching that breakpoint).

All this analysis is done with the point of showing the change, not that Mastery is better— why? Well because Mastery does not affect HW: Sanctuary any longer… haste does. We have no choice, this is the stat that scales the spell and this is how the stat interacts with it.

From my raid testing, Mastery is still a potent stat for us, and will be the go-to stat for Healers in between attainable Haste Breakpoints.

Commentary and Concerns About HW: Sanctuary’s Scalability -

If you compare HW: Sanctuary to the current Live version, it has scaled the least of our spells from 85 to 90, has regained its 6 Target+ DR, and has lost its CD reduction from Tome of Light– I would much rather see its mana cost increase, and output increase as well… since right now there is little incentive to use Sanctuary unless you have surplus mana to burn.

UPDATED -
This chart and post has been updated as of Beta Build 16004, and includes the changes to HW: Sanctuary extending to 30 second duration. You’ll notice that this affects and makes early haste breakpoints easier to hit.

Holy Word: Sanctuary – Scaling in Mists of Pandaria is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Mists of Pandaria – Priest Regen Talent Choices

Mist of Pandaria Regen Calculations Updated is a post from: Tales of a Priest

However, it doesn’t mean I love every change that they make… and sometimes, its important for us to point out changes that could be missed… and I do think that Blizzard is missing the mark when it comes to Chakra.

Chakra was introduced in the 4.0 build and during Cataclysm’s beta we saw a number of changes to the spell as it rolled out. Chakra was released as a way for priests to “feel in the zone” and so we can maximize our output. It was introduced to give us flexibility and opportunity to be fluid in our healing and to align ourselves with the role we’re playing in our raid. However, with the current incarnation… and the current beta build it actually is doing the opposite It has become restrictive, punitive, and disadvantages priests.

First let’s understand where the spell is CURRENTLY ON LIVE. Chakra provides PVE Healing Priests really two ‘stances’ to be in, one specialized for AOE Healing and the other for Single Target Healing. (Let’s ignore Chakra: Smite as that really is a questing/psuedo-DPS stance— if you can call it that!) Additionally, each Chakra stance, through Revelations,  gives us access to one Holy Word: Sanctuary and Serenity for our AOE healing, and single target healing respectively.

The current incarnation of Chakra is pretty poor considering the fact that in a PVE situation, very rarely are you ever going to use Chakra: Serenity over Sanctuary; something which  GC acknowledged earlier. (here) The benefits of Sanctuary greatly outweigh the benefits (and cost) of Serenity.

The latest beta build (15799) introduced these changes:

• Chakra: Sanctuary: Increases the healing done by your area of effect healing spells by 15%, reduces the cooldown of your Circle of Healing spell by 2 sec, and transforms your Holy Word: Chastise spell into Holy Word: Sanctuary.
• Chakra: Serenity: Increases the healing done by your single-target healing spells by 15%, causes them to refresh the duration of your Renew on the target, and transforms your Holy Word: Chastise spell into Holy Word: Serenity.

You’ll notice that Serenity received a huge buff over the previous incarnation and Sanctuary lost the 15% buff to Renew (sidenote: making renew very weak overall, hopefully we’ll see it buffed to be more in line with the mana cost required). This is great news, right? No, actually it causes and exacerbates some really complicated problems when you consider how class-balance is benchmarked…

Benchmarking

The development team does a good deal of testing and benchmarking. This includes being certain that no one class’s potential output is meaningfully weaker or stronger than another. This means, when Blizzard is bechmarking our AOE healing they are weighing in the 15% AOE Bonus that Chakra: Sanctuary provides us and when benchmarking our single target healing they are weighing in the bonuses that Chakra: Serenity provides us. Good, right? No… The concept of Chakra immediately puts us at a disadvantage should we heal “oustide our stance”. Why’s that? Because we are benchmarked assuming we are in the ‘buffed’ stance.

If I am in Chakra: Sanctuary my AOE heals are healing for what I am balanced around other class AOE heals. Now, if I were to assist healing the tank with my Single Target heals… my single target heals are now healing without the 15% throughput bonus that the other classes are balanced around.  No other healer is disadvantaged when this occurs… is a HPally hindered when he casts Radiance or Light of Dawn? No. Is Wild Growth nerfed if a druid is rolling LB’s on a tank? No. The fact that we have to ‘give up’ a static buff (ie. each stance’s respective 15% bonus) should we decide to enter our ‘single target’ stance is punitive.

Even if I compare Holy to Disc, Holy is disadvanted by nature of how Chakra works. Let’s compare single target healing:  Discipline has Grace, which provides added throughput (up to 30%) to single target heals. To match a Greater Heal as Holy, I would have to be in Chakra: Serenity (15% buff)… if that same Disc Priest, who just was healing the tank, casts Prayer of Healing…. he is guaranteed his added throughput since Divine Aegis is Guaranteed on POH. The Holy priest would need to be in Chakra: Sanctuary to stay in lockstep. The BASE healing  of these spells are the same, its the Chakra/Grace/Divine Aegis interaction that brings it up to the benchmark.

We are not advantaged when in a Chakra state, we are balanced around that state. If Chakra stances gave a meaningful benefit over other healers, as the  opportunity cost of having “oustside of stance” heals inferior… then I might be Ok with it. However, that then brings up even more balancing issues… if Chakra: Sanctuary priests could inherently be the ‘strongest AOE’ healer, while giving up either single target throughput; you’d simply have raids stacking priests and have them specialize for their roles. Not what we want to accomplish here.

Further, this seems to be extra punitive to 10 mans, when cross-healing is the name of the game, while in 25′s you sometimes can have the luxury of ‘exclusively’ tank or raid healing. Cross-healing immediately is wounded by the disparity between stances.

Stance Dancing Doesn’t Correct the Problem

Chakra has a 30 second cooldown. So even if I were to swap back and forth, I am locked into the corresponding Chakra buff for 30 seconds; disadvantaging any ‘outside of stance’ heals. Even if Blizzard were to remove the CD on Chakra, it then would become painfully maintenance-y. You’d be swapping in and out every time you wanted to cast a different heal.

A great example of why this doesn’t work was when I was Raid Testing Imperial Vizier Zor’lok the other day: he mind controlled me, and immediately put me in Chakra: Chastise. This then left my heals (BOTH single and AOE) disadvantaged for 30 seconds. If another healer was MC’d, even if the MC used a cooldown… their subsequent heals stayed just as potent as they were prior to the mind control.

No other healer has to give up their throughput in one form of healing to be equal in another.

Potential Solutions

Scrap the current form of Chakra. It is inflexible, complicated to balance, and frankly does the opposite of what it is trying to do. Balance our AOE and single target throughput baseline. In the interest of full disclosure and due diligence, this would require a passive Holy-only buff, as Disc has POH/DAs guaranteed and Grace.

Then, have all the Holy Words share a cooldown. If you cast Sanctuary, you can’t cast Serenity until Sanctuary is off CD (and visa versa). This still gives us access to the benefits of the two spells, and situational usage of them both, but doesn’t allow us to use them any more frequently than we could have before.

I would much rather have Chakra be the Holy counterpoint to Disc’s Archangel. Simply put: make Chakra a throughput cooldown… “Align Chakra”, or something. Allow US to DECIDE when we need the improved throughput in AOE or Single Target… don’t balance around it as some mutually exclusive stance.

I am curious to understand how Blizzard balances around Chakra’s stances, and the give up we have to take when doing this. It is materially different than what the other healers have to do if they want to AOE or Single Target heal… and its materially different enough, and in a substantive way that it is punitive.

Maybe we’re all missing something here… I don’t see it and I would love to be enlightened. I don’t want to be overpowered or over-advantaged. I only want to be able to do my job well, and not worry about impairing my ability to be flexible. Afterall, isn’t that supposed to be the new mantra in the healing world? That all healers should be able to do every job effectively?

Note: I have updated the Mana Regen Talent post to reflect the buff in Beta Build 15799 to Mindbender (here).

Chakra and Why You Should Be Concerned is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Regen will be a big part of our playstyle and gearing in Mists, so it is important to understand how each of our regen abilities work. I think we’ve covered and understand how Spirit and Rapture work from my previous post (here). But let’s take a look at the talent choics in our Third Tier that is available at Level 45.

**note that this post has been updated on 7/30/12 to contain data from Beta Build 15913**

From Darkness Comes Light – FDCL is arguably the hardest talent to quantify the amount of mana we ‘regen’, since it mostly is a mana savings ability. That said is is the least predictable source of mana regeneration since it purely revolves around RNG. Additionally, for FDCL to proc you have to be casting one of the required spells to trigger it— depending on your role, casting a Heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, or Smite might not be something you do with much regularity (ie. If you are primarily raid healing). If that is the case, you might not proc FDCL often enough to benefit from it. If you are doing a lot of Single Target Direct Heals (STDH) , and have good RNG on the proc, it could work out greatly to your advantage. And for Holy priests, FDCL’s free-Flash Heals, also can translate into discounted Greater Heals and Prayer of Healings via Serendipity.

Mindbender – We’ve seen this little critter get changed a number of times over in the last several builds– most recently increasing it from 1% to 1.3. (though the math seems to be using 1.33…%) The first thing to keep in mind is that this replaces Shadowfiend. If you do not spec into this, you will still have access to baseline Shadowfiend. The latest incarnation has it have a 60 second cooldown, and restore 1.3% mana per swing. The biggest boon with this change is that we can cast it more often (well, duh)… It gives you greater uptime of the spell, despite per CAST Shadowfiend restores more mana. The fact that you get more off in a given encounter is the critical point.  That said there are some issues with both Shadowfiend and Mindbender. We should be able to assume SF would give us 8 swings (3% regen per swing), and MB would give us 10 swings (1.3% regen per swing). Even with 0 Haste (remember MB/SF swings are affected by haste, so it is possible to get MORE than 8 or 10 swings) you can be ‘shorted’ swings and in turn result in less mana restored. For purposes of analysis, we are going to assume we don’t lose (or gain) swings.

Power Word: Solace – A 2 second cast that simply restores 2% of our mana back. Currently, even if you miss damaging the target with the spell, you are still granted the 2% mana back. (Resto Shaman everywhere just screamed… since missing a TC Lightning Bolt was painful). For priests who are comfortable with ‘weaving spells’ (e.g. Atonement Priests in Cata), this could be a net gain back for you. The question is, will you be GCD capped too often that you won’t be able to weave these back in. That said, potentially the biggest strength of PW: Solace is its granularity in the method it regens (ie. you dont have to worry about holding off on the spell to ‘cap’ your mana pool).

Ok lets take a look at some of the numbers— for purposes of this analysis, lets ignore Haste as it will provide scaling for all 3 options, and any ‘Free/Discounted Heals’ provided by FDCL will be consumed as raw healing.

Per Proc/Cast Analysis – Data

From Darkness Comes Light – when proc’d is worth a free Flash Heal, at a mana value of  19,800. (A each Stack of Serendipity provides a discount of 1980 on GH, and 1500 on POH.) Per proc “Regen” is worth 19,800 for Disc and 21,300 – 21,780 for Holy. We will not deduct the cost of the spell that proc’d FDCL as that is a sunk cost. (The same reason we do not count PW:S’s cost into Rapture regen assumptions). Average regen: Disc at 19,800 and Holy at 21,540

Mindbender – provides ~40,000 (rounded due to repeating) mana per cast.

Shadowfiend – (remember if you don’t spec MB, you  still have SF!) provides 72,000 mana per cast.

Power Word: Solace – provides 6,000 mana per cast.

Potential Simulation and Theoretical Mana Returns

Now that we have a per cast, calculation we need to equalize the information (for ease of consumption, we will use a per minute comparison). Additionally we will need to make assumptions regarding FDCL procsrate, and the number of possible PW: Solace casts you could weave in during a given period of time. Additionally, the FIGHT DURATION is important, as you may or may not be able to get full use of Shadowfiend. (ie. 2 minutes left on CD of Shadowfiend… Mindbender would have had 2 additional casts). To equalize that, let’s take a look at a 5 minute fight. (This is typically the standard fight assumption). (2 casts of Shadowfiend, and 5 casts of Mindbender) Perhaps most importantly, we need to keep this haste nuetral as you must create a constant.

Lets look at these one by each, first the easiest comparison….

Mindbender vs PW: Solace…. Ready? Fight!!!

Lets take a look at the lowest common denominator… a 3 minute fight, where you get 1 Shadowfiend and 3 Minbenders– aka Advantaging Mindbender as much as possible given the synching of CDs. This means Mindbender grants you 117,000 mana (3 casts, regenning 40,000 each). With two casts of Solace Per minute, you’ll outpace. In fact in this example, you’d only need one additional solace over the 3 minutes to match Mindbender. Simply, you’ll need 2.6667 every minute– since you can’t cast .6667 of a Solace,  any additional casts of Solace beyond your 3rd would put PW: Solace in a superior position (over the length of the fight)… again, provided you can find the GCD to not heal, and cast Solace. It might require slightly more work or planning on your part, but if you can find your way to cast additional, you’ll be able to outpace Mindbender. 

It is important to recognize that the 3 minute fight advantages Minbender as much as possible (because of the length time and how it syncs up with cooldowns). The 5 minute fight, at ~3 casts per minute is about equal to Mindbender (though slightly more) given how the cooldown of Shadowfiend lines up and ‘catches up’ any disparity in mana. The key you need to remember is that this assumption forces you to have 6 seconds (3 casts at 2 seconds per cast) with no raw cast-healing output. Inspired by some numbers that Malevica did, I want to present the information similarly so you can easily see how the fight duration impacts “which is better” at what interval, and number of Solaces.

This chart illustrates the importance of understanding the fight’s length and when/where additional Solaces might be needed.

From Darkness, Comes Light is a bit trickier… with a 15% proc chance, normalized, you would need to cast 7 qualifying spells to proc it once. Again, under zero Haste assumptions, this means (provided you are chain casting spells that could trigger the proc) the most you could get in a minute (normalized) is roughly 3 (potentially 4, depending how often you cast Smite). How likely are you going to be chain casting those qualifying heals? Not very. Normalized, you should only be experiencing 1-2 per minute…. that is, if you are remembering to cast those Single Target Heals! It really will vary depending on how much triage healing you’ll be doing, and how much AOE healing you’ll be doing. For argument’s sake lets also account for Serendipity‘s discount as well.

PPM = Procs Per Minute. FDCL numbers include Shadowfiend Regen

Now it is important to realize that FDCL, might look incredibly overpowered… but its not ‘true’ regen. Its illustrating the psuedo-regen from the fact that you could heal with that Surge of Light proc for free, and then the impact of the cost savings from Serendipity (if spec’d Holy). So, you need to ask yourself “Will I be in a raid encounter that requires me to single target heal often enough, to then need a free single target heal again? Is that the regen/mana savings I need?”

With that in mind, I foresee FDCL being powerful for Priests who are doing a good deal of single target healing; be it 5 man healing, 5 healing in raids, or raid encounters that demand single target healing… (eg. Baleroc, Spine of Deathwing…). Now we could simulate triage healing, and 15% chance of that triage healing… but making up simulations like that is a bit of a red herring. A 10,000 foot view of analysis is sufficient to get the big picture… running parses in real raid encounters is typically superior form of analysis. Besides…. maybe you do single target heal a lot in your raid group. If so… FDCL, might be the talent of choice.

Based on the facts current as of Beta Build 15882… PW: Solace still seems to be the strongest potential for regen. FDCL is the hardest to evaluate but really depends on your spell and damage design of a given encounter. (Our ability to respond to the encounters, illustrates the benefits of the MoP talent system very well). Mindbender’s buff was probably due… and it really depends on how much movement, and your ability to weave and learn how to get those PW: Solace casts in. (A simple mouseover/assist macro should make this easier for folks) Mindbender is much stronger than the previous Beta build, however has a finite amount of restoration, while Solace relies on how much YOU can cast it– thus greater potential regen.

These abilities, just like the rest of our talents we need to remember that we can respec! A measly 12 gold will allow us to buy a reagent to respec. So, if you are in a fight where you think one ability is superior… then by all means use that one over the other. The biggest change to the talent system is something that allows us to respond to the encounter:  Evaluate the encounter– look at your spec, and respond accordingly.

Mists of Pandaria – Priest Regen Talent Choices is a post from: Tales of a Priest

At 90, all Priests will have a total mana pool of 300,000 regardless of intellect. Spells will now cost a fixed percentage of total mana (changed from Cata’s “% of base mana”). This is means if Greater Heal costs you 6.6% mana (or 19,800 mana at level 90), it will always cost the same amount regarless of gear level. This addresses and interesting issue that Blizzard has always struggled with: mana cost scaling as people gear up through tiers.

Remember hitting 85 and realizing that the one greater heal you just cast seemed to cost 20% of your mana pool? Well, thats because they needed to balance mana costs so the cost scaled with gearing. Look at yourself now in Cata, probably walking around in Dragon Soul gear… one greater heal is a fraction of your mana pool. Well, in Mists of Pandaria that cost is going to feel the same at just hitting 90 and being geared to the teeth in full T14 gear.

This also impacts how we look at our regen as well, and means that mana regen abilities that used to scale with our gear will not do the same in Mists of Pandaria. Take Shadowfiend for example: Shadowfiend restores 3% mana per swing. Well, in Cata this 3% scaled as your mana pool got bigger, increasing the value of Shadowfiend’s regen as you geared up. Well… in Mists, it will still be 3% per swing, however since our mana pool will not increase that 3% per swing at Level 90 is 9,000 mana per swing. That is 9,000 mana as a fresh level 90 in quest greens, or in full Tier gear. The same logic applies to Hymn of Hope, Innervate, and all the other “percent of mana” restorative abilities.  Since these are now essentially fixed amounts of restoration, you can think of them similar to a Mana Potion: a flat amount of mana you will get back that does not scale.

What does this all mean?

Well, it means we have to look at mana a bit differently. It really will become a finite resource and the way we look at our pool will be the same regardless of gear level…. until we layer in regeneration. Aside from our static regen abilities (Shadowfiend, Hymn, Mindbender, and Mana Potions) we will have spirit based regeneration. As of the latest beta build the spirit regeneration while in combat is provided by Meditation.  Holy and Disc have their own versions of Meditation (Currently, both Holy have 50% of their spirit based regen, continue while in combat), while Shadow does not have a spirit based regen model while in combat. (their primary regen is through Vampiric Touch).

This means, Disc and Holy will need to look to Spirit as their go-to stat for regeneration.

Every priest, regardless of spec, spirit level, or combat status will have an innate baseline regeneration amount. This is 2% of Total Mana every 5 seconds. After backing into the ratio in the charsheet, Spirit, is worth 1.1287 MP5.  This then allows us to back into our formula:

Combat Regen = Total Mana *0.02 +(1.1287*SPI*Meditation%) 

Now that we have our formula, we can take a look at how spirit as a stat will scale for both specs. Baseline, they have equal regen based on spirit. However, it is important to note that Disc still has the Specialization ability Rapture. Putting my personal feelings about this ability aside, Rapture now creates a really tricky balancing act for the developers to keep Discipline’s mana in check.

What Rapture provide’s Discipline, isn’t necessarily “regen”, but when Power Word: Shield is used on Rapture’s cooldown, it provides a Shield at a very reduced cost. This is because when the Shield is fully consumed, the priest is restored mana based on their total spirit… essentially providing an exceptionally mana efficient shield.

At 90, with Inner Fire active, PW: Shield costs 6.1% mana or 18,300– with 10,000 spirit, attainable in the first Tier of MOP raiding, Rapture restore’s 15,000 mana, which means this shield costs 3,300 mana. Exceptionally efficient– regardless of how much it shields for.  From a scaling perspective, this could put Discipline at a marked advantage, providing them with a “free PW: Shield and additional regen” once they reach 12,200 spirit. (The point where Rapture restores the full cost of PW: Shield)

Scaling

Since Combat Regen scaling is so single stat-linear now (unlike in Cata it had interaction with both Intellect and Spirit), depending on the total amount of spirit available on MoP gear, there WILL come a cross over point where there will be threshholds on where spirit will be devalued. (there is in the Cata model as well, but its less evident given that it moves based on two stats vs MoP’s single stat)

Its actually pretty easy to model since you know how much MP5 a finite amount of spirit restores, and you could make mana consumption assumptions. Its one of the downsides and follies to having total mana and the per point value of spirit equal in Quest Greens at 90, and Full Epics at 90.

Conclusion

The take away for everyone is:  Spirit will play a notably important role for both Disc and Holy’s mana regen model. Now, spirit, while not a direct throughput stat like Crit, Haste, or Mastery… it does provide indirect or “pseudo throughput” since you will have more mana regenerated, and thus will be able to cast more spells.

This will be different than what Disc priests  have been used to up until this point, who have always looked at Intellect as their go-to stat… However, ultimately, this new model could result in balance cross-tier if they can balance how fast Spirit/Spirit Regeneration scales in the long term. I do have some concerns that upper tier will result in so much spirit based/innate regen that this balance could tip… but time will tell.

Editor’s Comment: Updated as of 8/28/2012

Mists of Pandaria’s Spirit Regen and Mana Models is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Cascade – (10% Mana Cost, 25 Sec CD) Grows in strength the further it travels. So if you have your raid in a tight group of players ( a la Ultraxion) the growth of this spell is limited, despite the spell “preferring targets further away”.  Also, this spell has a finite target cap: 15, and it will not hit the same target multiple times. This makes the spell more expensive in the HPM (Healing Per Mana) world of 10 mans, as the spell will only hit 10 players and 5 charges/bounces are left unused.

Halo – (15% Mana Cost, 40 Sec CD) This spell also has a tricky range issue and ‘grows in strength’ component. This one reaches maximum strength at 25 yards. For example, at the epicenter (the casting priest) the spell is roughly one tenth the strength of the maximum strength at 25 yards. (and yes, it literally gets stronger every step you move away… its that sensitive) So this means that on fights where your raid is grouped up (again using Ultraxion as an example) you are disadvantaged to using this spell as you are giving up a good deal of healing being close to the epicenter. Halo also does not have a maximum number of targets.

Divine Star – (5% Mana Cost, 15 Sec CD) This spell is easiest compared to Light of Dawn. It moves in a straight line in front of you and then comes back to you in whatever position you are in. (ie. So if you are moving it will move  back to you covering an angle) heaing everything within 6 yards of the star… so think of it like a 12 yard wide bar moving out in front of you, and then back. If it passes a target twice (out and back) it will hit them twice. This spell does heal for the lowest amount, and the amount per hit is FIXED (in the tooltip). This spell also does not have a maximum number of targets.

So taking the positioning into account, and the growing power, you need to make some assumptions. The way I decided to compare these to each other was creating an average hit, with both spell hit minimums and maximums– this should, in effect, neutralize the range and “strength grows with distance” variable. For Divine Star, since the speed of the spell is pretty damn quick, and in PVE you usually try to minimize the amount of movement you do, I assumed that if you were hit by the Star you likely got hit by the rebound.

Level 90 Abilities – The Numbers is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Cascade -  The biggest advantage Cascade has its its amazing range. Thebounces can provide the priest with a unique ability to reach far away raid members with much needed healing. However, it is important to understand that Cascade is the only ability of the three that does not “heal and damage” and will only HEAL if you are targeting a friendly, and DAMAGE if you target a hostile. The other two abilities, Halo and Divine Star, do both depending on what they collide with in their path. Cascade, however, ‘prefers’ to bounce to further away targets. So there is some randomization in there.

Divine Star – Divine Star’s animation is buggy and sometimes will not show up if there is a hill, stairs, or something it can collide with on its path. The damage and healing still occurs, however the animation is lackluster. The shortest range and directional requirement on Divine Star is also a disadvantage.  That said, it does heal and targets in its path twice (once out and once back). For Priests who might have Holy Paladin Alts, likening this to Light of Dawn might be an easy way to learn how to use it.

Halo  - First glances suggest Halo has the potential to be very powerful for 25 mans since it does not have a diminishing return after an excess of a certain number of targets.  Not to mention it looks pretty freaking amazing visually. However, for Halo to be of its greatest potency it grows in power as it goes out… so it does have a pseudo-positioning requirement for maximum efficiency. From a PVP perspective: this ability does break a hostile player’s stealth.

I will need to dive into numbers and figure out which one is ‘best’, however that could be tricky given the ‘growing strength’ that Halo has as it gets bigger.Viscerally, I am thinking Cascade has the best potential for keeping people alive. However for pure output, Halo has good potential  for spread out fights (think Ragnaros), and Divine Star has potential for grouped up fights… (think Ultraxion). Number analysis later.

Level 90 Priest Abilities is a post from: Tales of a Priest

In case people missed it: both Holy and Disc have their own “filler spell”.  Holy has Heal and Discipline has Spirit Shell (SS). I won’t call it our “triage” spell… because well, we saw how long that lasted in Cata!  This is pretty much a mana nuetral spell (at 85 it costs 2,000 mana) and with fairly attainable spirit levels, you can pretty much chain cast this spell and never run out of mana… even with Rapture removed from the game, with some minor reforging back to spirit my MP5 was fine. That said, there are some fundamental issues with the spell, as is. Now, of course, this analysis has only been done and tested at level 85 and 86 on the beta servers.

In its current form,  I am not a fan. First off it has SUCH A LONG CAST TIME… The base cast time for Spirit Shell is 3 seconds. While GHeal and even Holy’s regular Heal enjoy a baseline 2.5 sec cast time. This does seem like an oversight and will (hopefully) be address in a future beta build, but even with that issue getting addressed there are other fundemental concerns I have with the spell.

My issues with Spirit Shell are the the fact that it cannot crit (nor can the 80% heal at should the shield expire) and as a result scales with only Spellpower and Mastery. Additionally, it is affected by neither Grace nor Archangel. It also will only scale up to its 20% Priest’s HP as a hard cap. (Tested both with no items equipped and with full T13) Consecutive casts will stack the absorb (up to the cap) and reset the duration of the shield. With a fairly fairly low % of HP as the cap, we could wind up having interesting statweights. (Remember  Mastery doesnt increase the 20% cap) It will depend on where SP and HP land at lvl 90, but we could wind up having Spirit Shell be very easy to cap, while Holy doesn’t get restricted in that manner.  (Of course, Mastery will increase Divine Aegis for the GHeal, and Penance heals we critically heal on, and the baseline POH DA’s– not to mention PW:S’s absorption so Mastery will be vital for Disc in MOP; however, lets not dive into hard statweights before level 90 and the class gets more polished)

This presents a fair amount of inequity between the two specs for our “mana nuetral” spell. With mana management being a major focus for the developers in MOP, this inequity poses a potential problem. (Your mana pool is fixed as intellect will NOT increase your pool). In current T13 gear, it takes me 3 casts to cap 20% HP (yes… at a 2.57 cast time with my T13 haste, thats ~7.7 seconds to create a ~30k bubble. Yawn) On the other hand, Holy’s heal, at 2.5 sec base cast time (hasted to 2.29 in T13 gear) in the same 3 casts (6.9 seconds and is critable) for ~10k per hit and whatever stacks of Echo of Light have been generated. This means Holy can scale with both Crit and Mastery and  baseline “heals” for the same amount. Unless Blue is trying to draw a line in the sand and state that pre-emptive healing is that superior to raw healing (which I doubt), there are inequities that need to be addressed before this spell can go live.

The alternative argument would be to Atonement heal or GHeal if I wanted to raw heal with scale.  However with mana being such a limited resource (100k, regardless of Intellect; Spirit will be king for recovering mana)— chain casting Smites and Holy Fire will not be something we will likely be able to do with much regularity as they are much more expensive than Spirit Shell).

I think we will see Spirit Shell get a number of passes before it goes live as it is a new spell in our toolkit, and frankly is one of the more unique spells in the game. I would imagine we would see the cast time reduced to 2.5 seconds, as well as something to address scaling– even something as simple as increasing the HP cap to DA’s 40% and allowing it to Critically “shield”.  I am sure the development team is watching this spell and listening to feedback– so I’d expect to see a number of changes before MOP goes live.

Mists of Pandaria Beta: Musings on Spirit Shell is a post from: Tales of a Priest

First and foremost, there seems to be an undocumented change for Archangel that I’ve yet to see posted by a Blue or on World of Raids/MMO-C in the beta builds. Was this a stealth/undocumented change or is this simply a bug? Given the number of other mana restorative talents that have been nerfed, I am betting that this one was intentional but just accidentally overlooked in patch notes.

Triggering Archangel only restores 1% of your mana per stack (down from 3%). The most you can restore is 5% of your mana (down from 15%). This means, even fully Evangelism stacked (in full T11), you are operating at a net loss. (Of course the restore will scale as your mana pool increases, while the smite cost stays the same- but a nerf none the less). ZOMG! WTF BLIZZ?! Nerfing our mana!? CMON!?!?!

Wait… let’s not be too hasty here. Let’s stop and take a look at this.

The main purpose of popping your Evangelism stacks is to allow you to kick up your raw healing— when you need to actually heal and not PW:S or Smite-heal through Atonement. This is further supported by the fact that Archangel has a modest cooldown: only 30 seconds. Archangel’s cooldown is not so long that it is restrictive, but it is long enough to force you to THINK before you mash your Archangel keybind instead of just triggering it as soon as you hit 5 stacks. You should be asking yourself: “Am I going to need to switch to Flash Heal/GHeal/Penance/PoH/etc, now?” If the answer is “yes”, then you probably should trigger Archangel. “Think before you press a button” is the mantra that is Cataclysm– get used to it.

But Derevka!!! If that is the case, why have it restore any mana at all?

The mana restoration is the “quid pro quo, Clarice”. It is what you get in exchange for having only the “smart healing” component of Atonement. Smiting will allow you to essentially heal for the same amount as a regular Heal – you just give up your targeting abilities of who is getting that heal. The mana return that Archangel provides is the “give back” for not being able to select your targets.

Smite-to-heal is a great concept. However, in practice, I found the healing that Atonement provided very unpredictable. One of the first things you need to be comfortable with in Cataclysm is: SEEING RAID MEMBERS NOT AT 100% HP T ALL TIMES. As a result of sub 100% HP raid members, this does affect how Atonement will act since it will heal targets that you might not have wanted it to select. (ie. a melee and not the MT) Remember, if you NEED the tank to be healed… heal the damn tank. Don’t just spam Smite and hope Atonement selects your tank– be smart with your spell selection. For me, I am still not overly excited about Atonement healing, and am strongly considering skipping AA and getting more throughput/survivability talents instead. (eg. Inner Sanctum, Inspiration, Darkness.)

I did create a Power Aura for Evangelism/Archangel with is available on the new Power Auras page here! Check it out!

Grace received a buff as well. Grace’s bonus healing was doubled to 4%/8%, allowing the Discipline Priest added bonuses when we focus direct healing on a single target. Will this be enough to increase Disc’s throughput to be a Primary Tank healer? Maybe… However, many Disc specs wind up skipping Inspiration for capping off all the other Disc throughput toys… you might see Disc’s with a tough question to ask themselves: “What do I give up for Inspiration?”.

Finally, the latest build also really augmented Disc’s raid healing.

1. Prayer of Healing’s base healing is increased by 20%

2. Divine Aegis now procs from all PoH Heals

The Divine Aegis/POH guarantee is a huge buff to Discipline raid healing. Disc priests no longer have to crit with POH to apply DA. This immediately provides a 30% throughput increase to POH by automatically DAing those targets. Discipline was missing something like this as Disc’s raid healing was phenomenally weak, especially since Raid Bubbling isn’t viable with Cataclysm’s mana conservation theme. I know I am already reveling in Borrowed Time -> POH healing. (remember POH has had its base cast time reduced in an earlier patch)

Couple the improvements to Disc’s POH healing with the change to Power Word: Barrier, and you’ll start seeing Disc being able to be a fantastic raid stabilizing healer. Barrier has lost the “X Damage absorption” effect and is now a 30% Pain Suppression for 10 seconds for all those who stay under the Barrier. (Reminds me of Divine Guardian). In a Twitter conversation with Suzushiiro, he brought up a good point and speculation: Will this be restricted like Death Knight’s AMZ? If not, you could see Priests using this as an additional tank CD and not as a true ‘Raid CD’.

Overall, I think Disc is still a bit weaker than it should be – I think PW: Shield is a bit under-tuned. (even when you weigh in Mastery) However, I do understand the need to keep PW:S where it is: if they buff it too much it reinforces the “bubble monkey” role. We cannot allow Disc to get back to the mindless PW:S spam. It is a great spec, and has a lot of potential especially with all the changes that have been introduced to Disc over the last few patches. These changes are allowing Discipline a chance to shine, however, it is ultimately up to the player to decide when to press what button. Discipline, especially in late Wrath of the Lich King, was just one button healing… these changes really have brought back many spells into Disc’s arsenal.

I still think I’ll be playing Holy primarily, as I am really having a lot of fun with the two Chakra states, but I need to do some more Raid Testing with the new build to really decide my preferred healing spec– I do think Discipline needs a bit more throughput to be where it should be.

What do other people think of these new changes? Is it enough?

A 4.0 & Cataclysm Disc Update is a post from: Tales of a Priest

We need to remember that the main purpose of Chakra is to make us feel “in the zone” and maximizing our abilities for that task. A Renew state really didn’t provide much aside from making one spell better– it didn’t really augment a “healing role”. (ie. Tank Healing or Raid Healing)Don’t worry- we now have Rapid Renewal which will reduce our GCD on Renew, which will help us blanket the raid easier on fights that will demand it.  It also will provide higher teir Holy Tree talents to help us get deeper in the tree without being “forced” to pick up Lightwell, Desperate Prayer, or Spirit of Redemption. On top of that the bonus to Renew has been added to our AOE Healing Chakra, so we will still continue to have that available.

A Priest’s Guide to Chakra Healing is a post from: Tales of a Priest